


It's All Br'aad's Fault

by CaveOfChaos



Category: Just Roll With It (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, a few chapters maybe??, inspired by ShadowReaper_912, mention of violence, tw: a large hopelessness feeling in chapter 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:22:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25599508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaveOfChaos/pseuds/CaveOfChaos
Summary: (Inspired by ShadowReaper_912's story Articulate Illiterate)SPOILERS FOR ARC 2 EPISODE 31It was all Br'aad's fault. Sylnan lost his reading but the Demon had lost so much more.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	1. The Broken

The red shards fell. It all fell. All those words Ugarth had written, everything. All that time he had caught up with Ugarth’s life, gone. He would never read another word. And it was all Br’aad’s fault. 

Well, that sounded like a problem for Sylnan. To be quite honest, that dark presence inside of the now-illertate half-elf had it much worse. The amount of power he had lost with that falter in the mind of the man he inhabited. When his stupid hand reached into his pocket and pulled out that crystal. When the other half-elf crushed it into shards.

That ear splitting headache that was crawling inside of Sylnan’s head was not a headache at all. It was the demon, ripping across Sylnan’s mind, trying to keep all the power he had lost. It all was gone. His bones from another plane felt as though they had all snapped in two then were put back together several times over.

It was all Br'aad’s fault. He watched through Sylnan’s eyes as he flipped through the pages of that stupid book he could no longer read. That other half-elf would get what he deserved.

The demon, even powered down, had the power to bend Sylnan’s emotions to his will. Especially with the state he was in. So he pulled a few strings and Sylnan said a few things.

Then there was blood on the ground. Then there was more and more blood. Then more and more.

It all went dark almost as quickly as when it all went red. He hoped Br’aad felt every single slash he had urged Sylnan to do. He hoped every bone that had snapped would make Br’aad feel all the pain that had befallen him.

It was all Br’aad’s fault, after all.


	2. The Void

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> might fuck around and write a few chapters :)

His head was spinning. Well, not physically, he couldn’t feel or see anything physically.

He felt like he was floating. The void of silence and black filled his gaze. Yet, his head still hurt, he felt something… red across his non-existent body. He should have a body. Where had it gone? Where had the world gone?

Before this… darkness, he had felt anger. Intense anger, like an anger he had never felt before. When he saw the last thing he had seen in a while, a page of words he lacked the ability to read.

Where had it gone?

A hazy blue caught at the edges of the darkness, slowly it devoured the void into another. Sounds beside the ever buzzing of silence filled his ears. Muffled and impossible to hear fully, he listened. It was too dark still to see anything. Nothingness was barely past.

“S…?” He could make out the harsh ‘S’ of a word. The blues around him toppled over as a shadowed presence just beyond his reach showed itself.

“S… n?” The word was aggravatingly close to being heard, He grasped onto the sound as silence washed over him once more.

The world around him slowly leaked back to the dark. He tried to shout, to call out anything, to someone, anyone to stop it. To stop the darkness slowly consuming the tips of the blue-ish skyline of nothing.

Nothing. Not a letter. Nothing. Just the force of the shout echoed through his mind. The only place where echos could be held. 

Fear ran up his body, twisting at his flesh that was not there. 

Who was he?

Where was he?

Where was his body?

Who had muttered the word that broke through the silence?


	3. The Silence

He had been sitting in silence for a while now, it had begun to become comforting in a terrifying way. The darkness around him was calming and kind.

He missed the odd blue void that had filled it, and that word, “S.. n”, that he couldn’t quite place. He felt something else was here with him. A dark shadow, hardly able to be seen against the ever-present darkness approached him.

The harsh tone and words it spoke were hard to understand, yet so nice to hear. It had been a long time since he had heard, well, anything. The shadow had two pale purple circles scratched into it which must have been it’s eyes.

The harsh tone sounded again, this time in more of a questioning way. He tried to respond, but nothing came out, just like before. 

“It’ssss Br’aad’s fault.” It’s eyes widened as the words were hissed out in Common. He stared at the creature. Br’aad... that name… it made him angry. He wasn’t sure why. That book with the squiggles must have something to do with it.

He couldn’t respond to the pale purple, he could only watch.

“Hissss fault.” 

The shadow hissed as a hazy void crossed the darkness like it had before.

“Br’aad’sssss fault.” The words twisted through the air as those pale purple eyes melted into the blue empty.

He was scared. This figure must have gotten hurt because of this Br’aad. The silence was washed away by that word. The word he couldn’t place.

“S… ? ….e.” Two words. Both too mumbled in the haze between the blue and the world to understand.

What was this ‘S…’? Who was this Br’aad?

Who was anyone? He tried to think of his past or anything beyond this darkness and that book… all he could reach was empty. 

“S...an?”   
The word slipped through the cracks of the blue. A bright purple light shone through the darkness, blinding him for a long moment.

“Sylnan?”

The darkness swallowed him up again, twisting around the light, breaking it back into the nothing of where it belonged. He spoke out loud this time. The motion of a nonexistent mouth felt so freeing.

“Who is Sylnan?”


	4. The World

The purple eyes gazed upon him as he drifted back from the Middle Void as he had nicknamed it. It was when he dazed off inside the blackness, sometimes he could remember little pieces of who he was. He never could figure out who this ‘Sylnan’ was. There was never any sound, only silence.

“Hello.” He spoke aloud, it had been a while since he had seen the eyes. It had been a while since the blue had appeared or since the purple light had burned through.

The eyes let out a harsh word he couldn’t understand then a simple, “Hi.”

“Who are you-- what are you?”

The eyes studied him for a moment. It began mumbling, looking down into the void beneath. He picked up on the words it had said before out of the harsh ones he couldn’t understand. “It’s all Br’aad’s fault.”

“Who’s Br’aad? What did it do?”

The eyes whipped back up. Then, with no warning and no blue void; purple shot through.

He felt as though his non-existent body was burning. A yell trailed out from his invisible lungs. The grating feeling blasted the eyes away with a long hiss.

“Sylnan? Please, you need to come back.”

The void grew much brighter. He had to close his non-existent eyes. 

“Sylnan? Please, please, please.”

He was Sylnan, wasn’t he? The name, he knew it. He had heard it. He remembered the face of a young boy with long ears.

“Sylnan?” That was the word the boy had mouthed in the silence of the Middle Void. He felt himself drifting into the Middle Void. The memories.

One of sadness. The death of a face much like the one he didn’t have. A single needle, guards. No father. Little brother.

One of fear. The face of the little brother being held in his hand. A purple marking and a fearful tone. The words he had said were muffled but angry and scared.

One of happiness. His little brother showing up again, drinking with friends. One with a long beard. One with purple skin like the purple eyes. One with a cat-like face.

One of pain. Pain. A sharp weapon plunging through his chest, leaving him to die in a dark place he remembered to be a sewer. A face of a lover in the dreamscape of death.

One of rage. The red crystal breaking. The words failing in pages of an old friend. One of a man with golden markings tracing his skin.

He felt. It was something warm draped over his body. The body that he had. He felt heat burning his skin. He shouted in agny before the heat melted away.

His dark eyes flickered open. The world around him was so different from the void. It was like the purple light that had broken through.

Faces hovered around him. Faces he could remember from what the Middle Void had shown him. No words came to mind that matched them. He bent his head to the side He could move! He could see!

But could he speak?

“Where?-”

The voices of the faces broke through the hushed quiet. It wasn’t silence. It wasn’t anything like the silence of the void.

“Sylnan? Are you awake?”

“Yeah, probably he has his eyes open, doesn’t he?”

“He moved! Oh thank the gods he’s alive! I couldn’t have him die again.”

“I hope he doesn’t attack us again.”

“Shut up! He won’t. It was probably just that demon.”

“Shhhh shhh shhh, he said something.”

He coughed. A feeling he hadn’t felt in while.

“It’s all Br’aad’s fault.” He whispered. It was the only phrase he could remember how to say. There was so much going on. His eyes landed on a face with golden tattoos crawling up it. Three long thin scars were carved beneath his eye. The face’s green eyes looked worried down at him.

“What?” The golden tattooed face’s voice fell. He-- Sylnan stared up at it. He remembered he could move. 

He pushed off the soft rectangle, he recalled from the Middle Void it was called a ‘bed’.

“Where am I?”

“You’ve been unconscious for three days Sylnan. You- you attacked me and Mountain after he tried to pull you away then Vel when you tried to attack Mountain and the Taxi knocked you out and-”

“Who?”

The man with golden tattoos eyes seemed to break as droplets at their edges. His voice broke as he spoke, “Do you not know who we are?”

“I-I know who you are. Just not the words.”

“The words?” The golden tattooed man echoed. There were no echos in the void.

“Our names, Br’aad. My name is Velrisa or Vel. You know who I am though, right?” The purple woman with long horns asked.

“Yes…”

“I’m Br’aad.” The golden tattoo man said. He tensed. That was the bad one. Yet, he didn’t seem evil. Sylnan connected it now. He was the child from the sadness and fear. He was his brother.

“...Uh, I’m Mountain. Are you sure you’re alright?” The man with the long beard asked. Sylnan remembered he had tried to kill them with a bear trap. The words came back to him then.

“Then you’re… Taxi.” He got up off the bed, pointing the finger that existed at the cat-like man. Taxi gave a nervous nod.

“You're not… mad I knocked you out right. Like you won’t attack me like you did to- to Br’aad and Mountain and Vel. You got quite a few punches in there. You scratched Br’aad really badly.”

Sylnan looked down at his hands. One was bandaged in white, a pale purple pulsed in the veins. That was the color of the eyes.

“I’m sorry.” It was barely a whisper.

The assortment of faces and bodies approached him gave sad sighes and forgiving comments. He wasn’t scared while they walked towards him. He remembered who they were to him. Sylnan didn’t pull away from them as they all collectively embraced him.

These were his friends.

His best friends.

**Author's Note:**

> Not my best work, but I hope you enjoyed!


End file.
